Welcome to the ITFreeTraining video on Windows Server 2012 licensing. Windows Server 2012
is licensed under two main parts, the server license and client access licenses. In this
video, I will look at server licenses. By the end of the video, you will know how many
licenses you need according to how many CPU's your server has and how many virtual server
instances you plan to run. When you purchase Windows Server 2012 you
purchase the right to install Windows Server 2012. The license you obtain with Windows
Server 2012 determines how many physical CPU's can be used with that install and also how
many virtual machines can be installed at no extra cost.
Shown here is the license limitations per edition of Windows Server 2012. To start with,
you can see the Datacenter edition, like all the other editions, allows one physical install
per server install but an unlimited amount of virtual Windows Server 2012 virtual instances
to be run on that physical server. Virtual instances must be run on the same physical
server. They can be run on a different physical server only if there are licenses on that
server that allow this. With the one license you can have a maximum
of 2 CPUs in the physical CPU in the server. Datacenter does support up to 64 CPUs which
if you have a server with more than 2 CPUs you will need to purchase additional licenses.
Later in the video I will cover purchasing additional licenses to allow you to run additional
CPU's and virtual servers. The 2 CPU license count only refers to the
number of physical CPUs, there is no limit to how many cores each CPU has.
The next edition, the standard edition, only differs from the Datacenter in the number
of virtual server instances it supports. The standard edition supports two, I will cover
how these work and how to add additional licenses later in the video.
The next edition, the essentials editions, allows only one install, either a physical
install or a virtual install. The essentials edition supports only 2 CPUs so this means
you can only use one or two CPU's with the Essentials editions regards how many licenses
you have. The last edition, the Foundation edition,
supports only a physical install. It does not support a virtual install. It also only
supports one CPU. The Foundation edition is more designed to provide basic features for
a small office so it does not require additional features. I will now look at adding additional
CPU license and virtual server instance licenses starting with CPU.
Adding CPU licenses is quite easy. For Standard and Datacenter, if you want to use more than
2 CPUs in the one physical server you need to purchase another copy of Windows Server
2012. This new copy or license will effectively allow that server to use 2 more CPUs. The
license also need to be the same edition. You could not, for example, purchase standard
edition licenses to run on Datacenter. Remember that Foundation and Essentials editions
do not support more than 2 CPUs so if you have a server that supports more than 2 CPUs
you should purchase the Standard or Datacenter edition.
If you had a server that supported 6 CPUs for example, this would mean that you would
need to own 3 Windows Server 2012 licenses. This may seem an unusually type of license
agreement, but when you start considering that computing is moving more towards cloud
technology, it makes sense that licensing would start working based on what the server
can do rather than how many servers there are. I will now look at how the licenses work
for virtual server instances. When you purchase a Windows Server 2012 license,
you effectively have the right to install Windows Server 2012 on a physical server.
With the standard edition of Windows Server 2012, you are also allow to install two virtual instances
of Windows Server 2012. These 2 instances must run on that physical server. You cannot
use a virtual license from one server on another server.
This may sound like you can run 3 separate installs of Windows Server 2012 on the same
server that you can do what you like with, however this is not the case. Once all the
virtual licenses are in use, the physical server can only be used for management of
the virtual machines running on that server. In this example, if there are two running
instances of Windows Server 2012 running on the physical server, the physical server is
only there to run the virtual server. You could not for example, install additional
roles on the server or use it as a file server if all the virtual licenses were in use.
Since the physical server is only there to run the 2 virtual servers, Microsoft allows
any virtualization solution to be used. You do not have to use Hyper-V for example to
run the virtual instances; you could run another solution like VMWare to run the virtual server
instances. If you wish to run additional virtual instances
on the same physical computer, you can purchase an additional Windows Server 2012 license.
This will allow you to run two more virtual server instances. So this means that you can
run as many virtual server instances on that physical server that it can support and that
you are prepared to purchase licenses for. In some cases you may want to move virtual
server instances between physical servers. For example, for performance reasons or to
take the physical server down for maintenance. If you consider the following example. There
are 3 physical servers. All physical servers have 2 licenses and thus can run 4 virtual
instances. A decision is made to take the first server down for extended maintenance
and thus the virtual server instances must be move to other servers.
Since the second server has 2 licenses and only 2 virtual instances running, 2 of the
virtual server instances can be moved to this server from the first server. No more virtual
instances can be moved because there are not enough licenses available.
In order to move the last 2 remaining virtual instances, a new license needs to be purchased
which, in this example, I will add to the 3rd server. The additional license will allow
the 3rd server to run 2 additional virtual instances. This means that last two virtual
instances can be moved from the first server to the 3rd server.
Now you may be thinking, since the virtual machines are just being moved while the server
is down for maintenance, could the license just be moved as well? Microsoft only allows
the license to be transferred from server to server after 90 days have expired. So if
the license was moved to the 3rd server rather than purchasing a new license, 90 days would
need to expire before the license could be moved back to the first server. There are
some exceptions to this, for example, if the server was to have a major hardware failure
and would never to be brought back online again. In the case of massive hardware failure
like this the license could be moved straight away.
Well that covers it for Windows Server 2012 licenses. I hope you have found this video
informative. For more free videos please consider subscribing
or visit our web site. Thanks for watching and see you next time.